Reading to write: language forms, structures and grammar
What this note covers
- Parts of speech, verb forms and tenses
- Vocabulary and cohesion: synonyms, antonyms and discourse markers
- Syntax, clauses, phrasal verbs and collocations
- Language for purpose and audience, and metalanguage
4 sections · 10 key terms & formulas · 5 common mistakes
Every sentence is built from parts of speech, the word classes that do different jobs. Nouns name people, places, things and ideas (teacher, Sydney, freedom). Pronouns replace nouns (she, them, which). Verbs show actions, states or happenings (run, seem, become). Adjectives describe nouns (fragile, enormous) and adverbs describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs (quietly, extremely). Prepositions show position or relationship (under, during, by), and conjunctions join words, phrases and clauses (and, because, although).
Many words change class depending on use: in a run in the park the word run is a noun, but in we run daily it is a verb. Always decide the class from the job the word does in the sentence, not from the word alone.
Writers choose parts of speech to shape ideas and perspectives. A noun such as newcomers positions people differently from invaders, and an adjective such as determined gives a more positive view than stubborn. Strong verbs carry attitude: stroll, stagger and march all mean walk, but each creates a different picture.
Verb forms. Most English verbs have five forms: the base form (walk), the third-person singular (walks), the past simple (walked), the past participle (walked) and the present participle (walking). Irregular verbs break the pattern: go, went, gone; write, wrote, written; buy, bought, bought. Auxiliary verbs (be, have, do) and modal verbs (can, must, might) help form tenses and show certainty or obligation.
Tenses. Learn the main ones by their form and purpose:
- Present simple (she studies): habits and general truths.
- Present continuous (she is studying): actions happening now or temporary situations.
- Past simple (she studied): finished actions at a definite time.
- Present perfect (she has studied): past actions linked to now, often with since or for.
- Past continuous (she was studying): an action in progress in the past.
- Future (she will study): predictions and decisions.
Keep tense consistent unless the time really changes. A common EAL/D error is mixing tenses within one paragraph for no reason.
Parts of speech: factory, families, town are nouns; many is a determiner; slowly is an adverb; since and and are a conjunction and a linking word. Tenses: closed is past simple (a finished event), have moved is present perfect (a past action with results now), and is dying is present continuous (a process happening now). The writer chose the present continuous verb is dying and the metaphor for a town to create a sense of ongoing, painful decline, which shapes the reader's sympathy.
Common questions
What does the HSC Year 11 English EAL/D note "Reading to write: language forms, structures and grammar" cover?
This note has 4 sections on Reading to write: language forms, structures and grammar. It includes 10 key terms and formulas, plus 5 common mistakes. It covers Y11, Reading to write: Transition to English EAL/D. The full section list is shown under “What this note covers”.
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